


Armourland

by attheborder



Category: The OA (TV)
Genre: D2 is the horny dimension, F/M, Gen, Hap is home of phobic, M/M, Men Get Pegged, Pre-Part II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 12:37:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18366155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attheborder/pseuds/attheborder
Summary: Pre-Part II. Hap has an interesting time adjusting to his new life as Dr. Percy.





	Armourland

_i wanna take you home_ _  
_ _take off your blindfold and show you what i am_

 _—_ [ _everything everything - armourland_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGDHsf9cyCg)

 

The first thing Hap does is get out the razor. It’s in the third drawer down on the sink cabinet, exactly where he kept it back home, and it’s the same brand, too. With a satisfying whirr he flicks it on and brings it to his face, the mundanity of the motion imbued with something like victory.

He washes the remnants of the beard down the sink and stares at himself in the mirror. _There. Much better._ Something still has to be done about the hair, but he doesn’t trust himself with that on his own. He finds his favorite Clubman aftershave in the usual place as well (bottom shelf in the mirror cabinet) and rubs it on. The mirror is speckled and dirty, as grimy as the rest of the spacious apartment. Hap drags a finger down the center of the mirror, making a line in the dirt that divides his face in half.

***

It’s easy enough to beg off from the clinic for a few days, claiming rest and recovery is needed after the incident. The next morning, Tuesday, Hap calls in and tells the girl at the front desk— Darmi— that he’ll be back on Monday, that he’s got a terrible migraine and needs to be back in top form to do his best work with the patients, so he’s spending a few days at the spa in Sausalito (the flyer is pinned to the cluttered corkboard in the foyer).

“Of course, Dr. Percy,” Darmi breathes over the phone. “Dr. Roberts says he’s feeling fine. He can cover the clients no problem.”

_Right. “Clients.”_

As he hangs up the phone, his thoughts turn back the hours to the look on Homer’s face as he rescued Hap from Scott— not an expression he ever expected to see, incongruous, a bird of paradise in the Arctic waste. Worshipful. Devoted. And that told him, in an instant, that “Dr. Roberts” was not the same Homer he had tortured for seven years. Everyone else made it— himself, Scott, Renata, Rachel, that much was obvious. But not Homer. It hurts him, that deep hurt of the absence of logic in a plan he thought he’d perfected, that he doesn’t know _why_.

And there is so much else Hap doesn’t know. Six days until he’s expected back on Treasure Island. Will that be long enough?

He looks around the apartment, sees a study with books piled precariously high, a computer at a desk almost completely covered in stained coffee cups.

Hap supposes, at the very least, he can begin by cleaning the damn place.

***

Dr. Roberts had sent Dr. Percy home yesterday after it was clear he was far more affected by the carbon monoxide than himself, and is glad to hear from Darmi that Dr. Percy wasn’t going to be coming in today. It’s a stranger relief than it would’ve been— Dr. Roberts of course wants Dr. Percy to value his health, and had taken over shifts countless times in the past to make sure his advisor got sleep or got over a bad cold. It was standard practice at this point. Dr. Roberts knew Dr. Percy’s workaholic tendencies inside out, knew exactly when he was at his most vulnerable and needed a break in order to make a breakthrough.

But something about Dr. Percy’s frantic, intoxicated laughter in the rec room as the alarms blared around them had scared him more than any dangerous sleepless night. The thought of seeing Dr. Percy _like that_ again, so out of control, so deranged, feels like a threat to his own hard-won stability. He truly doesn’t know what he’d do if Dr. Percy couldn’t continue on as his advisor, if somehow the incident had permanently affected him.

So Dr. Roberts is grateful he doesn’t have to face down Dr. Percy on his rounds today, that he can cover the clients in solitude. He decides to check up first on the clients who had been in session during the incident yesterday. He hadn’t gotten a chance to see them yesterday after they’d been given full physical checkups by the medic.

In his office, he loads their files onto his tablet and heads off down the hall. Rachel DeGrasso, Renata Duarte, Scott Brown.

Rachel is first. Easy enough. He opens the door to her room; she’s sitting on the bed and she looks up at him with those big, sad, puppy-dog eyes of hers. There’s no real reason to speak to her, but he does it anyway, out of habit and because Dr. Percy says it’s good for her mental well-being to act as though she can understand and be understood.

“Hi, Rachel,” Dr. Roberts says kindly. “How are you feeling today?”

He doesn’t expect an answer, and doesn’t receive one.

“I’m sorry about what happened yesterday. That must have been very stressful and scary for you.”

She looks at him.

“I want you to know that we have your safety and best interests at heart here, as always,” he says. “They’re replacing the entire atmospheric monitoring system in the building, so it won’t happen again.”

She gets up and walks to the door, which he’d closed behind him on entering.

He shakes his head. “Rachel, you know you can’t leave,” he says, and she’s tugging desperately at the locked door now, still staring at him.

“No, Rachel,” Dr. Roberts says, as kindly as he can, shaking his head again, but now Rachel’s face transforms into a mask of pain, her mouth open in a silent shout. She reaches out for him, tears rolling down her cheeks, and it’s against protocol to engage in physical intimacy with clients so he backs away from her slowly, tablet in front of him like a shield.

“Rachel, I need you to get back on your bed,” he says, motioning as gently as he can. He can’t look away from her. “I’ll come back when you’ve calmed down.”

She points to him. Her hand is shaking.  

“Yes. Me. I’ll come back,” he says. “Dr. Percy is out for the week.”

This sends her into another round of body-wracking sobs. He gently moves forward, avoiding her grasping hands, and comes around from the side to guide her towards her bed. Sitting her down, his face is as close to hers as it has gotten, and he sees in her eyes a deep fear that he’s never glimpsed— not the obsessive anxiety and suicidality that Rachel had been admitted for in the first place, but something darker, something directed at _him._

He stands up, backs out of the room, her swimming eyes following him all the while. Closing the door, he leans against it, head bent down towards his tablet, where he records in her file: _Client is overemotional. Body language is desperate, anxious, possibly as reaction to CO2 toxicity. Recommend medical monitoring and potential upping of regular lorazepam dosage._

All available logic tells him this was a side effect of the oxygen deprivation she had just experienced, some kind of enhanced paranoia. Satisfied with this explanation, he moves down the hall to check in on Renata. Into her room where she is lying face-up, arms crossed on top of her heart like Snow White. Her eyes follow him as he enters but she doesn’t sit up.

“How are you feeling, Renata?” Dr. Roberts asks, pulling up her file. The last evaluation Dr. Percy gave her had been relatively positive, noting that her delusions of grandeur had subsided alongside a reduction in severity of her persecution complex.

“Good question,” she says. “How are _you,_ Homer?”

Dr. Roberts raises his eyebrows. He can’t remember Renata ever calling him by his first name before.

“You are a _doctor_ now?” Renata asks.

“Renata, I’ve been your doctor for three years,” Dr. Roberts reminds her gently. _Maybe some kind of retrograde amnesia brought on by the CO2 exposure?_

“Three years?” snarls Renata, sitting up now, pulling her blanket around her in a whirlwind of motion. She avoids Dr. Robert’s gaze, staring into the empty corner of her room. “Three years ago you helped put me in a _cage,_ you bastard, do not pretend!”

_Manifestation of claustrophobia in response to traumatizing event?_

“You know you’re here to be helped,” Dr. Roberts begins to protest.

Renata breaks out into a sob. “I thought… I thought we would be free after we moved,” she says, gazing upward. “Do you remember? Homer, do you remember? You ran away. You were going to leave us to die but you came back and helped us move…”

Dr. Roberts is silent, waiting to hear what she’ll say next.

“Tell me why you protected him,” Renata cries.

“Scott was trying to _kill_ Dr. Percy, Renata,” Dr. Roberts says.  “He was having a psychotic episode. I had to intervene, to save Dr. Percy.”

Renata finally turns to meet his eyes. Like Rachel, she reaches out to him, and once more he backs away. Her hand drops, but she continues to stare at him.

“It’s all backwards,” she says. “Please, you must remember. You were his prisoner for seven years. Another dimension. We were all underground…” She buries her face in the blanket, muffling a wail.

Well, this is certainly new.

“Renata, I’m going to see you tomorrow in session,” he says. “For now, I want you to try and relax. I think I can help you figure this out. But you need to be patient, and trust me. Can you do that?”

She doesn’t respond. Dr. Roberts finishes notating the new delusion in Renata’s file and exits her room. Through the window he watches her slide back down onto her back, and place her arms across her chest again.

Two orderlies are standing guard outside Scott’s door, posted there after his attack on Dr. Percy, and Dr. Roberts nods to them as he unlocks it. “Keep an eye on him,” Dr. Roberts says. “Go in front of me.”

He opens the door and immediately Scott flies forwards, the orderlies catching him by the arms and holding him back to let Dr. Roberts enter safely.

“Sit him down,” Dr. Roberts instructs the orderlies, and they obediently push Scott into a seated position on his bed. His muscles strain against the twin grips for a moment but then he gives up, fingers twitching.

“Scott,” Dr. Robert begins, “do you want to tell me what’s gotten you so worked up? If it’s about the incident yesterday, I’d like to assure you we’re already taking steps to replace the building’s atmospheric monitoring sy–”

Scott spits, directly onto Dr. Roberts’ shoes. The glistening glob slides gracefully down the side of his right boot.

“How could you?” Scott snarls.

“Please,” says Dr. Roberts, keeping his bedside manner professional, “it would really help me to help you if you could explain why you’re feeling this way.”

“I woulda never taken you for a two-timing, good-for-nothing son of a bitch, Homer,” says Scott, “but you surprised me. And I _hate_ surprises.”

Dr. Roberts takes a deep breath. “Scott, why did you attack Dr. Percy? You’ve made such good progress here over the last few years.”

Scott’s laugh is belly-deep and cruel. “Why did _I_ do that to _him?_ ” he says, his grin disbelieving, and then it settles back into fury. “Wrong question. I want to know what the fuck _he_ did to _you._ ”

“To me?”

“To make you forget! Forget _everything!_ To make you his little marionette, his altar boy. I just— after everything you went through— _we_ went through. Homer, it’s _him._ It’s Hap.”

“Scott. I don’t know what you’re talking about. _Who’s Hap?_ ”

Scott goes limp, lurching forward as he’s held up by the orderlies. For a moment Dr. Roberts thinks he’s passed out. But then he lifts his head up, slowly.

“You’re not in there at all, are you?” he says, eyeing Dr. Roberts. “You’re _gone._ ”

“I’m right here, Scott,” says Dr. Roberts seriously, and pulls up the medication file on his tablet to modify. “I’m recommending an increase in your dosages beginning tonight. And I’m adding an additional daily session with Dr. Percy to your schedule, starting next week when he returns—”

Scott begins to thrash and kick now, yelling at Dr. Roberts: “Oh, you are _asking_ for it now, you zombie piece of—”

And now Dr. Roberts cuts him off with a motion to the orderly on the right, who swiftly brings forth a tranq and injects it into the side of Scott’s neck. Thus subdued, Scott sinks back onto his bed, and Dr. Roberts nods for the orderlies to leave.

They file out. Dr. Robert stands for a moment, looking down at Scott’s prone form, eyes fluttering closed.

With a last gasp of strength under the falling curtain of the tranquilizer Scott manages to curl his left hand into a middle finger, directed at Dr. Roberts, who takes this as his cue to exit as well.

He stands in the hallway a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. A mere hour ago he’d been thankful he didn’t have to meet Dr. Percy’s gaze so soon after the incident yesterday. Now he’s wishing more than anything that his mentor was here to guide him through this strange new territory.

***

The cleaning supplies in the apartment are wildly unsatisfactory, forcing Hap to venture out into the streets of San Francisco to retrieve Lysol, Swiffer pads, Comet, Dawn, steel wool sponges, and plenty of paper towels and garbage bags. He stops by a corner barber shop too, not able to abide for any longer the greasy weight of Dr. Percy’s hair on his head. He tips the barber 50% out of the abundant cash in Dr. Percy’s wallet, and as he leaves, he tilts his head up to the sky to let the sun of another world beat down on his face.  

Getting back to the apartment, he sets out the supplies and heads to the hi-fi cabinet in the living room to select some mood music. Scanning his eyes down the CD tower he’s mortified to find no metal at all but instead —

_Phish 11.17.97 - Grateful Dead 2.1.78 - Phish 12.1.95 - The String Cheese Incident 2.4.2003 - Vulfpeck Live At Red Rocks - Grateful Dead 12.2.73_

Hap buries his face in his hands, groaning in disbelief. A punishment for his hubris? Oh, it is very possible.

***

Dr. Roberts is torn between relief and stress when Dr. Percy fails to pick up his cell phone. He leaves a message, heart pounding:

“Dr. Percy, it’s me. I’m sorry to disturb your recovery, but I’m… I thought I should tell you— there’s been a, um. Development here at the clinic. It seems as though the three patients present for the incident yesterday are having an… adverse reaction. I think the shared experience has induced some kind of group psychosis. Please don’t feel the need to rush back, I have it under control— I just wanted to make sure you knew. Thanks. I’ll see you Monday.”

He hangs up, and takes deep calming breaths. Scott and Renata’s words are fading from his mind now, as they’re transferred automatically into the “crazy things patients say” section of his memory, but Dr. Roberts cannot shake Rachel’s face, collapsing in on itself like a dying star, screaming out what her voice cannot– that something is very, _very_ wrong.

***

Cleaning takes all morning, and by the time Hap is satisfied with his handiwork not only has the apartment been transformed, but his mind finally feels perfectly at ease. A haircut for the brain.

Hap checks Dr. Percy’s phone after putting away the supplies and sees a voicemail from Dr. Roberts. He listens to it carefully and then files it neatly in his mental hierarchy of obligations. How utterly relaxing to know that his three troublesome terrors were locked safely in a high-security mental clinic, with his very own guardian dog Dr. Roberts looking after them, and he doesn’t need to give a single thought to their well-being until he returns on Monday. No setting the wake-up alarms, no refilling the gas canisters, no stocking the food pellets. He can just sit here in this beautiful, clean apartment with a view of the Bay and focus on getting to know this new dimension.

Hap takes a notepad from a newly-organized stack on the desk, opens to a fresh page and sits down to make a list. 

  * __Dr. Percy - learn his life - must be able to_ _flawlessly_ _perform, arouse no suspicion__


  * _Dr. Roberts - why didn’t Homer make the jump? Inherent inhospitability of host body to entering consciousness? Theories needed_


  * _Prairie - does she_ _exist_ _in this dimension??? Must research_



Hap thinks for a moment, and his eyes fall on Dr. Percy’s ID tag from the clinic, which he’d placed carefully on a hook near the desk. He adds a fourth bullet point.

  * __Learn how to be a clinical psychologist__



He has the feeling he’s going to be doing a lot of reading this week.

***

That afternoon, Pierre Ruskin is zoned out in the back of his car. Aphex Twin is swooning in and out of his $3,000 headphones as his driver inches up 101 towards the city. This is part of his practice, making every movement into meditation— movement towards, movement away from, valuing the spaces in between obligations. If he was anything like other CEOs of his stature, he’d be taking a private helicopter from the valley every time he needed to go back and forth, but he prides himself on staying grounded, so to speak. He values roads, infrastructure; he tries to value traffic as much as he can, seeing it as definitive proof of the law of attraction drawing the most driven and determined people to this little bloom of land off the coast. The cars stacked up like so many toys in a toy box represent, to him, every customer primed to be served with solutions to problems they didn’t even know they had. From inside his cushioned Audi he’s receiving all of the stress and tension from the drivers around him and transforming them, like fuel, into good business.

Of course, he knows he might very well have a different opinion about traffic if he was the one at the wheel. But he’s not, and he’ll likely never have to be again, so what’s the use in forcing unneeded perspective?

Pierre’s phone buzzes in his hand and he sees a text from Nina, in Russian. His little Soviet doll. Her symposium at Stanford was going past 5 as she’d graciously agreed to do some one-on-ones with students afterwards so could he please call Hunter to let him know they’d need to push dinner to 9 PM?

He texts back in the affirmative and rings Hunter’s cell, the dial tone replacing the bleeps and bloops in his headphones.

“Hello?”

“Hunter!” Pierre crows. “I’m on my way back to the city now, but Nina’s running late from her Stanford thing and wants to move dinner to 9. That good by you?”

“Oh. Sure,” says Hunter.

“Great,” says Pierre. “We’ll see you then.”

“Pierre,” cuts in Hunter before Pierre can hang up. “Where are we meeting?”

“Nina’s place as usual,” says Pierre. “Unless you’ve surprised us with reservations at Kusakabe again?”

“Right, of course, I’m sorry,” says Hunter. He sounds a little... off, somehow, which Pierre barely has a millisecond to worry about before Hunter explains: “Look, Pierre, let me be honest— there was a bit of an incident at the clinic the other day. Carbon monoxide. My brain is a little… glitchy. Bad headaches. Can you send me the address?”

“Oh God, that’s terrible,” Pierre says. “Should we reschedule? I wouldn’t want you to—”

“No, no,” says Hunter. “I need something to take my mind off of it. Dinner sounds… lovely. Just don’t want to get lost on the way there.”

“Of course,” Pierre says. “I’ll text you the address. Take care. See you tonight.”

“Thank you. See you.”

Pierre shoots off the address to Hunter and then taps out a message back to Nina in Russian: _Hunter not in great mood. Needs to be distracted._

She sends back, in quick succession, the thinking emoji, the smirk emoji, and the OK hand sign emoji.

***

Hap had been nearly finished with Dr. Percy’s _Quantum Psychotic_ when Pierre had called, still working his way through step 1 on the to-do list, but now was hopelessly distracted. “Pierre Ruskin” typed into Google gives him the basic gist— Prophet of the Valley, rideshare, blockchain, rich as sin, obnoxiously handsome, all that— and a quick search of Dr. Percy’s calendar and email elucidates some of the rest. Ruskin seems to be a therapy client of Dr. Percy’s going back years, with a standing appointment on Monday afternoons, and they are also engaged in some kind of real estate business together— lots of references to a house. It seems as though the Nina that Ruskin had mentioned is one Nina Azarova— a very good friend of Dr. Percy’s, going by the multiple lengthy email chains on the front page of his inbox alone. He’s gone back and forth with Nina about philosophy, mathematics, psychology, mysticism, like some kind of private Socratic seminar.

Hap resists the urge to look her up as well. The last thing he needs right now is to show up to dinner and blow his cover three days in because he’s spent all afternoon drooling over some professor-type vixen, instead of putting in the work to research Dr. Percy. He’d be meeting her soon enough, anyway.

Forcing his attention back to _Quantum Psychotic,_ he begins the 17th chapter, which is titled “Evolution of Perception In The Post-Bicameral Era.” This guy really must have been on something.

Actually, now that he considers it...

In a formative moment of his youth, Hap had been permanently scared off of psychedelics after a paranoid college girlfriend sent his first and only shroom trip spiraling into negativity. Maybe this dimension’s Dr. Percy never had that experience— maybe he never even dated that girl— and instead instead spent his university years happily tripping balls.

That would certainly explain the jam bands.

Hap powers through the rest of the book, gnawing all the while on some terrible-tasting protein bars he scrounged in the pantry. He finishes it with his mind spinning. It’s not something Hap thinks _he_ would’ve ever be capable of writing— its brazen confidence in its own lack of groundedness seems so distant from the obsessive and regimented experimentation that he’s spent his entire adult life perfecting.

The blurbs on the back of the book (3rd edition, reprinted 2014) are fawning, idolatrous, confessing breathlessly to changed lives, transformed perspectives. And Hap is _jealous_. His own work is still in progress, still hiding in the shadows as he brings it to its full potential, and those that know of it utterly refuse to respect it for what it is: groundbreaking. And here’s Dr. Percy, a _pop_ _psychologist_ for god’s sake, with a best-selling book and the respect of millions around the world and a gorgeous apartment in the most expensive city in the country.

Hap’s anger builds at the injustice of it all, and he flings the book almost involuntarily across the room as if it’s burning his hands to touch it any longer.

He pours himself a glass of cool water from the high-tech fridge in Dr. Percy’s kitchen and sits back down at the computer. Maybe now would be a good time to move to step 2, if temporarily, just as a respite.

So: Dr. Roberts. His whole life is laid out with a few quick searches, and Hap sees almost immediately where the path forked in the garden. The sports section of Homer’s college paper reports his football scores and stats up to a point, at which there’s a blurb about a radius injury benching him for the season. After that, there’s nothing, until a period corresponding to his senior year— and then an abstract from his first published paper, as a research assistant in a clinical psychology lab alongside, yes: Dr. Hunter Percy.

Recent correspondence between Dr. Percy and Dr. Roberts certainly seems to reflect the terrifying, abberant loyalty that demonstrated itself on Monday immediately following the jump. The message he left yesterday on Dr. Percy’s phone, with its apologetic desperation, was just the latest episode in a one-sidedly sycophantic conversation stretching back years.

Out loud, Hap murmurs, in awed disbelief: “I’m his hero.” A satisfied smile breaks across his face.

This, then, is the silver lining behind whatever had gone wrong in the jump. The Dr. Roberts of this world was an ally, a _servant_ even: more pliable and trusting than Prairie had ever been. Hap can only begin to imagine the ways in which this could pay off for him. With Dr. Roberts as willing participant, it surely won’t be long before he unlocks the secret of what went wrong....

But now his thoughts have involuntarily turned to Prairie, and there’s no going back. Before he can make the conscious decision to move along to step 3, he’s typing in her name in the search bar. Lucky he moved so quickly, though, not having enough time to build up hope, because when the results load there’s nothing but spam links and scans of dress catalogs. She doesn’t exist.

He spends another thirty minutes trying keywords like “michigan” “blind” and “violin” but to no avail. Leaning back in his chair, he closes his eyes, tries to picture Prairie’s face. It darts in and out of his mind’s eye, imperfectly remembered but still beautiful, and he wishes that he had a picture of her, some kind of memento— it feels wrong to not have her near him, even out of sight, underground.

Hap looks down at his watch, now, and he realizes two things: first, it’s nearly time to leave for dinner, and second, he’s not at all confident in his ability to keep up an intellectual conversation in the voice of Dr. Percy with two of the esteemed man’s closest friends after a single day of research.

He tries to give himself some perspective: _Look. You just made an interdimensional jump, possibly as one of the first humans ever to do so. You can handle a goddamn dinner party._

***

The doorman recognizes Hap as he strides up the steps of Nina’s apartment building.

“Dr. Percy! You changed your hair,” says the doorman jovially.

Hap waves with a tight smile back to the doorman, enters the elevator and is already thinking ahead to explaining Dr. Percy’s new look to Ruskin when the elevator jolts upwards. He had automatically pressed the button for the penthouse.

That wasn’t _him,_ his memories, his action. That was the old inhabitant of this body, reaching out from inside while he wasn’t paying attention. And this terrifies him.

But he barely has a a minute to dwell on it before the doors open again, onto a sumptuously decorated penthouse apartment, awash in cream and marble.

Around the corner comes Pierre Ruskin himself.

“Hunter!” he exclaims, and pulls Hap into a too-tight embrace before stepping back to meet his eyes. “How are you feeling? Don’t say fine,” he says, anticipating perfectly Hap’s next words. His hands are warm on Hap’s shoulders. “I hope you’re sending insurance after the building managers for negligence. Let me know if you need a lawyer—”

“Pierre, thank you. But I really am fine,” says Hap, silently willing Ruskin to take his goddamn hands off of him. “They’re already working on replacing the building’s monitoring system. Apparently it hadn’t been updated since the 70’s.”

Ruskin finally lets his hands drop, shaking his head. “Tragic,” he says. “I mean, I really don’t know what I’d have done if something happened to you, Hunter. I feel like we’re on the verge of something great, don’t you?”

Hap, mumbling in agreement, follows Ruskin into the kitchen, where two sleek chefs are hard at work. Through an archway he can see a maid preparing three gilded table settings at a large, solid-looking oak table.

Without prompting, Ruskin launches into an elaborate explanation of tonight’s menu, leaving Hap to smile and nod while he sneaks glances around the apartment, trying to glean any kind of hints as to the nature of its owner.

“...and we’ll be finishing off with nitro-frosted jasmine sugar-spun ice cream. Dairy-free, of course.”

“Nina’s on her way?” Hap asked, as casually as possible.

“She should be here any minute. I can pull up her location…” and he begins to take out his phone, but Hap waves him down.

“It’s alright,” he says. “I trust her.”

Hap has a hard time reading the smile on Ruskin’s face now.

“Here, come to the living room,” says Ruskin, and Hap begins to follow him out of the kitchen. “I want to show you some new research Nina’s just translated from the original Russian. It might be the key to connecting the house’s infrastructure with cosmic geometry—”

They’re crossing back in front of the landing when the elevator doors open with a soft whoosh.

“Nina, just in time!” says Ruskin.

A woman steps out of the elevator.

“Sorry I’m late, Hunter,” she says. Her accent is Russian, her voice buttery as the expensive wallpaper of the apartment.

And she leans in to embrace Hap, her golden hair smelling like sandalwood and berries, and out of absolutely everything that’s happened to him so far— the movements, the jump, the revelations of the universe and the glimpses into the nature of life and death— this, this right here, this is what he cannot bring himself to believe.

Prairie. She’s here.

“You got a haircut,” Prairie— no, _Nina_ says, giving Hap an approving look. “I like it. Very hip.”

And then Hap watches, insides smoldering, as she presses herself to Ruskin’s side with a graceful intimacy and lays an easy, practiced kiss on his mouth.

A bell rings from the kitchen.

“Ah, thank god! Dinner is ready,” says Nina. “Dealing with undergraduates always makes me starving.”

“Great,” says Ruskin. “Hunter, I’ll just email you the translation later tonight.”

Hap is only capable of a single silent nod as he trails behind the happy couple towards the dining room.

From the back, she looks absolutely nothing like her.

***

Dinner passes in a blur of discussion and flavor and discussion about flavor. Hap wishes he could pause time, right there, so he could take hours and hours to page back through Dr. Percy’s emails with Nina before jumping back into the conversation. He feels lost, adrift— he needs some kind of clue, he _must_ understand how she’s _here_ and yet so obviously _not here._ Could it have something to do with Homer’s failure to jump...?

All things considered, though, the conversation itself is far less stressful than Hap had expected. Dr. Percy is a man of just as much erudition as Hap, naturally, so when the topics turn to science, music, contemporary art, he’s able to keep up and even enjoy it.

Making sure not to ask too many leading questions, Hap guides the conversation to the work Ruskin, Nina, and Dr. Percy are engaged in together. Through snatches of inconveniently clipped explanation he is able to glean that Nina and Ruskin founded a company, CURI, that is involved in accessing information from the collective unconscious via group dreaming, and that there is a house on Nob Hill that Nina owns, somehow connected to CURI, and Dr. Percy has been helping them figure out what causes the madness that descends upon people who enter.  

It becomes apparent that the direction Dr. Percy’s research has taken has been limited solely to the theoretical, the architectural, and the speculative. Of course— he’s a psychologist. Limited by the bounds of his own education and imagination, unable to take the leap into _real_ science. There is something very important about the house that Dr. Percy has been unable to see, but with his working knowledge of dimensional travel Hap is already closer than Dr. Percy has ever gotten. By the time the third course is served, a plan has begun to sprout in Hap’s mind, a germinating seed in the fertile plain of a fresh problem to solve.

***

After dessert, they retire to the living room with wine. Hap does his best to not stare at Nina as she wraps her cherry-black lips around the rim of her glass.

“Hunter,” Nina says, after a few minutes of light chat, “Pierre tells me earlier that he thinks you are in need of some... distraction.”

“I— well, it has been a pretty stressful week so far,” Hap demurs, “so I suppose…”

The atmosphere in the room has shifted suddenly, and his voice falters. Hap feels like he’s jumped again. Are his ears ringing?

Nina drains the last of her wine and sets it back down on the marble-slab coffee table. Like an invisible signal has been sent to his head, Ruskin does the same, and leans forward attentively.

Wordlessly, Nina takes Hap’s hand and stands up. Her fingers are soft, manicured, almost velvetine. He feels Ruskin’s eyes on him from the other side of the couch. Not quite sure what to do, he stands as well, letting her hand stay on his.

“Pierre,” Nina says. “Fetch it.”

Ruskin darts obediently out of the room. In one swift motion Nina pushes Hap back onto the couch and straddles him standing, towering above him in her crimson blouse like an open flame. He’s paralyzed.

“It’s been weeks,” she says, stroking the side of his face with the tip of a dangerously sharp nail. “I’ve been so busy. I missed you, dear Hunter.”

Hap stammers, “N-Nina…”

“Shh.” The finger crosses his face and lands on his lips. “I got you a present.”

Ruskin has reappeared silently, and he’s holding a lacquered black box. He hands it to Nina, who takes it with her left hand while letting her right rest on Hap’s mouth.

“Open it, Pierre,” commands Nina.

Ruskin obediently hinges open the thick lid of the box. Hap can’t see what’s inside it from his vantage point on the couch. Nina is holding it aloft as Ruskin kneels beside the couch, on the floor, his head at the level of Hap’s shoulder.

Nina’s fingers move down from Hap’s mouth to his collar. Dextrously, with one hand, she begins to unbutton his shirt. He feels another hand creeping around his wrist, towards his belt, but it’s not Nina’s— it’s Ruskin’s.

The box is lowered to his line of sight. Inside is something long and navy blue, surrounded by leather straps garnished with silver rivets.

Nina takes her hand off Hap’s shirt to tap the object with her nails, the sound sending an otherworldy shiver down his scalp and neck. “Handcrafted in Bulgaria,” she whispers, like an incantation. “Mint condition.”

She sits down on his lap, and the unexpected warm weight of her sends a wave of thick heat rushing down into his center.

“I want you to be the first to feel it,” she says. She removes it from the box and cradles it in her hands, leaning her face in close to his, and Hap inhales that foreign scent like it’s oxygen, and he’s close to surrender, he’ll do anything she wants—

But then Ruskin’s clammy hands crawl like so many spiders now up and around Hap’s neck, and in his ear Hap hears a soft “ _yes”_ from Ruskin as Nina’s tongue rakes across his cheek, underneath his glasses— and something breaks in the air, the room becoming a distorted reflection in a funhouse mirror.

Hap’s breath comes in raggedy gasps as he convulses, stiffens, shakes himself free of Nina and Ruskin and lurches to his feet.

“What’s wrong?” Nina reaches for him, and he flinches away.

“Ah— I— My—” Hap stammers.

“The headaches?” Ruskin supplies. “From the CO2.”

“Yes,” Hap agrees gratefully. “I’ll— I should go.”

“Of course,” Nina says. “You poor thing.”

Hap makes for the elevator, clutching his head in a way he hopes isn’t too theatrical. Nina blows him a kiss with the hand that isn’t still gripping the blue dildo.

_Dr. Percy, you mad dog._

As the elevator doors slide closed, he hears Nina say: “I suppose I’ll have to break it in with you after all, Pierre. Are you sure this wasn’t your plan all along?”

***

The week passes in a haze of research and acclimatization. By the end he’s almost jealous of his former captives— they certainly aren’t burning their eyes out with maps of San Francisco and endless chapters of _They Dreamed Of Blood Rivers,_ they’re getting three meals a day and plenty of lithium in the lockup, which to be honest sounds pretty great to him right now.  

Sunday afternoon is spent in final preparations for his return to the clinic. Familiarizing himself with the proprietary client data system, its workings as well as its contents; reading back through Dr. Percy’s Moleskine journal, with its notes on clients and helpful annotations of the latest psychology papers and general field news; reviewing the last six months of clinic administration meeting minutes. Budget, staffing, codes of conduct, more budget. There is so much boring bureaucracy that Dr. Percy tolerated daily— Hap imagines whatever path sent him into clinical psychology was one that didn’t let the sometimes-dangerous introversion that defined Hap’s own professional life get a foothold inside of his subconscious.  

After a dinner of Thai takeout, Hap turns his attention to the most important item on his schedule for tomorrow: therapy with Ruskin. He can’t find any audio tapes— they must be stored in Dr. Percy’s office at the clinic— but he manages to dig up a few annotated transcripts from the previous year in a networked folder buried in the client CMS.

Scrolling through shows that Dr. Percy has helped Ruskin work through narcissism, mommy issues, imposter syndrome, orthorexia, dysmorphia, phone addiction: the full spectrum of maladies for the modern, moneyed man.

And the deeper Hap gets into the transcripts, replete with earnest annotations from Dr. Percy, the more disgusted with Ruskin he becomes. The man is a slimy, money-grubbing charlatan who probably spends more on his own hair plugs than on actual scientific and technological research. He doesn’t deserve his own wealth and fame, let alone the love and attention and _touch_ of Nina Azarova. He’s a spoiled, perverted brat of a man who wouldn’t know a real scientific breakthrough if it… well, if it fucked him in the ass.  

But his CURI company, Hap has to admit, is more than a little intriguing, and the potential connection between the house on Nob Hill and his own life’s work is too precious to pass up.

It’s obvious to Hap that what has been holding Dr. Percy back is fear and ignorance, pure and simple. So many stones have been left carefully, ethically unturned.

But with Ruskin’s trust in him as his therapist fully secure thanks to Dr. Percy’s valiant efforts, Hap knows it will be child’s play to get him to give up what he needs to sate his curiosity: research subjects, fresh from the House.

And if he can get that out of the way quickly, it will leave his schedule clear to work on the one thing that now looms further above his work than anything has ever dared to do: Nina.

Hap finds himself nodding off at his desk, halfway in between sleep and waking, remembering the soft touch of Nina’s cool skin against his face, remembering her dark lipstick and that _accent…_ And then reality rushes back, and he’s hating himself for running away like that, but that wasn’t how he wanted it to happen, not with _Ruskin_ there, the little creep, no, it has to happen just right the first time, it has to be just the two of them—

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, after work, he’ll go to her apartment. She can use that thing on him if she really wants, but he’ll have her. He’ll have her and he won’t let her go again.

***

In the morning, Hap is sitting with Ruskin in the smartly-furnished session room adjacent to Dr. Percy’s office. The March sky outside is dusty gray and churning with clouds.

Hap lets the session proceed naturally. Once Ruskin’s exorcism of his anxieties turns to CURI and the House, Hap gently unleashes his heat-seeking missile of suggestion: a recollection of Ruskin’s repeated successes (as detailed in a forum post he’d dredged up as part of his research) in using crowdsourcing, the power of the masses, as a means to an end. Hap lets Ruskin digest that subtle reminder and quickly moves away from the topic, not giving it any more or less weight than their other areas of discussion, and trusting his instinct that the form of an idea was already taking shape in Ruskin’s mind.

They are nearly done with the session and a minute or two deep into a wildly boring reminiscence of a certain blue striped dress that Ruskin’s mother used to wear, when Ruskin’s phone buzzes on the table, and he reaches for it automatically, a guilty grin on his face.  

“Sorry, Hunter, must have forgotten to turn it off—”

Flipping the phone over, his face darkens as he reads the text.

“I’m sorry— it’s Nina, just one moment—”

He speed-dials and stands up from the couch, pacing to the far side of the room. “ _Ninotchka?_ ” Hap hears him say, and a rapid-fire exchange in Russian follows.

There is silence for a moment when Ruskin hangs up. Hap knows immediately that something very bad has happened. He’s almost afraid to ask.

“Pierre, what—”

“It’s Nina’s father... He’s been killed. Shot dead.”

Hap is speechless.

“She’s on the next flight out to Moscow,” Ruskin says grimly. “To settle his affairs.”

“I’m so sorry,” says Hap.

“God, she loved him,” Ruskin says. He sits back down on the couch. “I don’t know if she’s ready...”

What would Dr. Percy do in this moment? Hap has absolutely no idea. If he does the wrong thing it could throw off his whole plan, damage Ruskin’s trust in him, make him have to start all over finding a way into the House…

He thinks back to Ruskin’s clammy hands on his neck, that night at Nina’s apartment. Calculatingly, deliberately, but with as much naturalism as he can muster, Hap leans across the coffee table and lays his palm on Ruskin’s thigh.

Hap knows he’s taken the right path when Ruskin clasps with both hands onto his, clutching it tightly, and begins to tear up.

“Pierre, she is strong. She will make it through this. And _you_ have to be strong for her.”

“You’re right,” sniffs Ruskin. “You’re always right.”

He makes to lift Hap’s hand up his thigh and towards his groin, but Hap pulls away as gently as possible. “I— I have a clinic meeting to get to. Budget, you know,” he says apologetically, strenuously resisting the urge to wipe his hand on the the chair.

“Of course,” Ruskin says, standing and zipping up his fleece, far more relaxed than any man who had just been expecting to receive a handjob right there in therapy has any right to be. “I should go see her off.”

“How long do you think she’ll be gone for?” Hap asks.

Ruskin shrugs. “Could be a month. Maybe two,” he says. “You know how it can get over there.”

“Sure,” says Hap, although he has no idea.

“I’ll see you next week,” Ruskin says. “I think….”

“What?”

Ruskin gives him a smile that is obviously meant to come off as a rakish grin but turns out, to Hap’s eyes, more like a grimace. “I think I might have an idea. _Might._ ”

“An idea about…”

“When I know, you’ll know,” Ruskin promises. He lets his gaze linger on Hap for just a moment before departing.

Hap tries to give himself a private moment of internal elation regarding the success of his plan, but it’s soured by the knowledge that Nina is about to board a plane to Moscow. There go his evening plans.

Probably for the best, though. He has eight more private sessions on his schedule this week, not to mention group therapy and individual client check-ins. If he wants to maintain his cover, he needs to hit the books.

Hap remembers that moment in the elevator— back in Nina’s apartment building; the penthouse button he pressed automatically— and considers trying some kind of self-hypnosis, maybe a hidden trick or a method to retrieve Dr. Percy’s medical knowledge. But then he recalls the state of the apartment; the awful music; the regrettable grooming choices he’d had to correct upon arrival. There’s no way he’d risk the encroachment onto his precious consciousness by any of that— no, no, he’d have to do it the hard way. It would pay off in the end.

***

Hap gets to sleep the way he has been since his arrival: by imagining that the drone of cars in the streets below Dr. Percy’s apartment building are the wind in the trees outside the house in North Dakota.

He slips down into unconsciousness, drawn by the familiar rustling of the absent branches into the calm darkness.

And he’s falling now, like Alice, down-and-downer, until he lands in his old cracked-leather Eames chair from his living room in North Dakota, the fit of it around his back unmistakable and comforting.

In front of him he thinks for a moment there is a mirror, for he sees a reflection, but he moves forward and the reflection does not move, and he knows the mirror is actually a gilt-framed window.

His chair is different on the other side of the window; it’s the fancy modern office chair from Dr. Percy’s desk. Which makes the man sitting in it…

“Hello, Dr. Percy,” says Hap. He stands up and looks through the window, resting one hand on the frame and tapping on the glass with the other. It’s cold to the touch– a sheet of pure ice.

Dr. Percy stands up from the chair and approaches the window. “You’re going to ruin everything,” he says hoarsely. Strands of stringy hair hang loosely down on his forehead. He looks wind-tossed and sickly. His skin is graying and his teeth are yellowed.

Hap folds his arms. “On the contrary, Doctor,” he proclaims. “I’m improving upon your work every day. I’m taking the steps you were to too cowardly to take. Too blind to see.”

“Let me _out!_ ” shouts Dr. Percy, and rushes at the window, but with a nod of his head Hap forces him back into the chair. Chains made of ice crawl up around Dr. Percy’s arms and bind him in place.  

“You can’t keep me here forever,” Dr. Percy groans as Hap leans his head against the window, letting the icy cold flow through him like adrenaline. “You’ve _got_ to let me out.”

Hap laughs. “You sound just like Homer.”

And then as Dr. Percy shouts, the window and the chair he’s bound in recede from Hap, rushing backwards along an invisible track into the dark, and Hap begins to fall again, the cold that had felt so natural in his veins a moment prior turning painful, poison, burning.

***

In the morning, Hap doesn’t remember dreaming at all.

He never does.

***

Hap observes Dr. Roberts one afternoon in the staff room. Light is pouring in through the canted windows, dust swirling in the sunbeams. Someone’s brought mediocre bagels, and from the doorway Hap watches Dr. Roberts eat one, cream cheese and cucumber, chewing with his mouth open, thumbing through some dating app on his phone while crumbs drop down the front of his shirt like snowflakes.

It would be sad if it wasn’t so damn funny.

“Homer,” Hap says, walking over to the table, and Dr. Roberts jerks to attention.

He hastily swallows his bite of stale bagel and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “Dr. Percy— yes?”

“I’ve got a little bit of a client puzzle. Help talk me through it, I could use some perspective,” Hap says, sitting down next to Dr. Roberts.

“Of course,” Dr. Roberts says, straightening up, almost preeningly.

“I’m consulting for a friend of mine down at UCSF Medical. It’s one of the new boys on his ward,” Hap begins. “He’s got this hyperfixation on an… ex-flame of his. The bad news is, she just happens to be checked in down the hall. Total coincidence.”

“Mhm,” nods Dr. Roberts, paying such intense attention that Hap has the urge to assure him there isn’t going to be a pop quiz.

“She’s got a bad case of fugue. Sad, really. So she doesn’t remember him at all. And she’s not the woman she used to be. Almost completely transformed by the transient state of consciousness.”

“Right.”

“Their relationship in the past was… not the best. Troubled. She doesn’t remember that. And so he’s desperate for her, he’s practically stalking her across the ward. But every time he gets close enough to reintroduce himself, to make a new start with her, he gets scared off. Worried she’ll remember what he… did to her. He retreats, he self-harms, he’s driven to new depths of psychosis by… by her mere presence.”

“What’s her prognosis?”

“...Unclear. Could be she regains full function in days, could be she’s permanently impaired.”

“Hmm. It seems like it’s her transformation itself that is triggering such an outsized response in him. He perceives an existential threat to his reality in her loss of continuity. It’s almost like he’s taking her trauma onto himself, which sublimates his romantic affection into something more disruptive— maybe internally taking the form of classical heroism but externally presenting as self-sabotage, self-hatred.”

Hap nods. “And what would you suggest for treatment?”

“Well, in the case that they both remain on the ward long-term and neither can be transferred out, I suggest he be counseled with a view towards internal resolution. Learning to accept the change in her will change _him_ for the better, release him from a strangled view of the past, prevent him from repeating his mistakes. Best outcome: he accepts her how she is, and they develop a new relationship.”

“Or…”

“Well, worst-case, it goes wrong. His presence… could awaken negative associations. By reintroducing himself he very well could trigger a dangerous response in her, depending on the depth of her fugue, preventing him from ever truly reconnecting. Which could induce all sorts of problems— tear him apart. But I’m wondering, in terms of medication, are they—”

“Thank you, Dr. Roberts,” Hap cuts in brusquely. “That really helps. I’ll see you in group later.”

He strides out of the staff room, leaving Dr. Roberts to return ponderously to his beloved carbohydrates.

 _An existential threat to his reality in her loss of continuity._ Dr. Roberts is more right than he knows.

There has to be some way through the madness. If Hap is going to continue at peak mental capacity, he cannot let himself continue to be tortured by thoughts of Nina. It was a lucky break for him, looking back, that she was called away to Russia. He doubts he would have made as much progress as he has if she had been there, hovering over him the whole time— a hallucinogenic trap, Prairie with claws, undomesticated, visionary, holy.

So when she returns, he’ll be ready. He’ll be prepared to abstain, for the good of the endeavour. He’ll follow Dr. Roberts’ advice — he can’t have the same relationship with Nina that he had with Prairie, and certainly not the same relationship that Dr. Percy had with Nina. He can’t let himself be torn apart.

What he needs is Prairie. The _real_ Prairie. His partner. His dreamer. The map project is only getting started, but if he works hard enough, without distractions, maybe he can find a way to get her back.

  
***

It’s late in the afternoon in early May. Hap has dismissed Rachel from the lab for the day. The fourth subject, a wiry blonde teenage male, is propagating nicely.

When he turns his phone back on he sees that Ruskin has left him a voicemail.

“Nina’s back,” speaks the tinny recording. “She just landed. I was thinking we could celebrate later this week, maybe—”

Hap lets the rest of the message play out, but he isn’t listening. Almost involuntarily, he finds himself dialing Nina.

She picks up on the second ring. “Hunter,” she says.

“I hear you’ve returned,” Hap says.

“I want to see you,” she says. Hearing her voice is like jumping into a clear blue pool. “Meet me at Pierre’s house in two hours. You can update me on your research, and we can drink—”

And now Hap realizes he was wrong to call. He was putting himself and his work in danger. So he forces himself to say it. “I’m sorry, Nina, I don’t think I can. I need to… I have to focus on my work.”

“I do not believe you, Hunter,” says Nina. “I can hear the longing in your every word. You want to feel me again. Why else would you call? Surely not to hear my voice. I can send you my dream tapes for that.”

She’s so... _Russian_.

Hap says, “But Pierre—”

“Pierre will watch. You know how he loves to watch.”

“Nina, I wish I could.” He does. “But I have obligations here.” He does. “I’m on the verge of a breakthrough.” He is. “When I have something to show you, I’ll show you. I promise, it’ll change your life.” He truly hopes that it will.

Nina acquiesces, murmurs a subdued goodbye, hangs up. Hap barely notices. He’s captivated now by a vision, vivid as the flowers in the pool, of the perfect ending to his story in this dimension:

He’ll enter Nina’s apartment in the night, syringe in hand. He’ll bring Nina back here, to his lab— and then he’ll bring Prairie into Nina— how, he doesn’t know yet— and then— well, he can’t bring himself to go any further. He cannot know what she would do. He would hope, of course, that she’d be so grateful for her rebirth in the perfect, untraumatized body of a genius heiress, that she’d come to his arms and never leave, and they would travel together. But he’s not an idiot. She might just punch him in the face.

Hap lets out a deep, pained sigh. Too many moving parts. There is a part of him inside, (a weak and useless part he wishes he could stomp out), that finds itself longing for the simple days of the underground lab, of missions with clear objectives and experiments with reliable outcomes.

But this is how it must be. This is his life’s work. This is the arrow of progress, manifest destiny. Jumping into the unknown. It will all be worth it. He will be redeemed.

Probably.

***

Homer is in his cell, underground. He hasn’t left— but everyone else has. The cavern is dark, lifeless. The other cell are empty. A single light pulses, low and high, somewhere in the distant recesses of the room. Dim red light. A dying star.

He feels sick. Like he’s wasting away. The plants in his cell are brown, drooping.

A sound from beside him. He turns around. Every muscle in his body protests.

The cell next to him is not empty after all. But it’s not Prairie. A man sits on the bed. Homer can’t make out the face in the darkness. Lit from behind, he sees the silhouette of broad shoulders, a beard, slicked hair. Behind the man, the door of his cell is open, and beyond it, the red light throbs.

Homer throws himself at the glass separating himself from the man. “Hey!” he screams. “Get out of here! Your door is open— leave, get help— find something, break my door—”

The man rises from the bed and walks over to the divider. Homer recognizes his own face, his own eyes. It’s in the unquestioning way that Homer accepts this apparition that he recognizes the frictionless logic of his own dreams.

And like as if they are thinking the same thoughts, the other man speaks.

“I’m dreaming,” he says.

“We can’t both be dreaming,” Homer replies, slowly, thinking it through. “Either I’m dreaming you, or you’re dreaming me.”

The other him lifts his hands to his temples, eyes widening, fearful. Homer sees unfamiliar muscles press through the clean linen of his shirt.

“I don’t like this,” says the other him.

“Please,” Homer says, “you’ve got to help me get out. Come around to my door— get something heavy, try to break the lock—”

The other him backs away from the glass slowly. “I… I have to go… I can’t—”

“No!” Homer pleads. Ice starts to form across the glass barrier as the other him retreats into the darkness on the other side. Homer’s hand burns with the pain of the cold but he keeps banging on the glass, desperate, until the other him has slipped out the open door and out of sight, past the red glow.

Homer collapses back onto the bed, freezing, alone, wondering what will happen to him when the dream ends. A dry sob begins to rise in his throat. He shuts his eyes. Preparing to surrender, when—

From somewhere else, there is a whisper:

_“I’m coming.”_

And he breathes:

“OA!”

 

**Author's Note:**

> This work is inspired by all of those articles about Silicon Valley sex parties and also multiple tweets I saw from OA fan accounts about Nina's hypothetical strap.


End file.
